Have you ever thought about voting and percents? Take a look at this dilemma.

A senator wants to start a program to encourage more people to vote in his state. In County A, 32,100 people voted. In neighboring County B, 57,800 people voted. Which county needs the program more?

Well, it depends on how many people are in each of the counties.

We can’t compare the polling rates unless you use a percent.

If we know that the first county has a population of 39,150 people and the second county has a population of 81,400 people, we can now find what percent of the people voted.

We are comparing the number of people who voted with the population of each county. We are actually going to find two percents here. Do you know how to do this? Pay attention and you will understand how to complete this task by the end of the Concept.

Guidance

A percent is a part of a whole that represents a quantity out of 100. Fractions and decimals are also parts of a whole. Sometimes, you will be given information, but not a percent. You will need to know how to figure out the percent. Percents, fractions, decimals and proportions can all help to you solve problems and figure out percents.

You began using proportions to figure out a percent when writing fractions as percents. Remember that proportions involve comparing quantities.

Because both of these are comparing, we can use proportions to help us figure out a percent.

That is a great question.

First, we write the proportion using
over
.

This is equal to the percent which is out of 100.

Here is the proportion:

Now let's apply this proportion. Take a look at this dilemma.

15 out of 30 is what percent?

To work on this problem, first, we write a ratio comparing our given values to the missing percent.

We know that fifteen is half of thirty, and 50 is half of 100.

Our answer is 50%.

Write each as a percent.

Example A

18 out of 50

Solution:

Example B

22 out of 40

Solution:

Example C

78 out of 80

Solution:

Now let's go back to the dilemma from the beginning of the Concept.

For each county, we will use the proportion
where
is the number of people that voted and
is the total population.

In order to find the percent in each case, we used cross products as we would for any proportion. Now we can see that in County A, 82% of the people voted, while in County B only 71% of the people voted.